Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
To reach the safety of a home port you have to navigate the storm, the tempest that stalks us all when we take to the water and sail beyond the horizon for the first time; it is the search for ourselves that leads into the water, the chance to find the hero within, or at least the navigator for others to steer their own ships by, and as we sweat in the eye of the storm, as rain threatens to tear the skin from our soul, we offer A Drop For Neptune in return to home, we offer sacrifice to the god of the sea, and that sacrifice is a promise that we will always return to the water that surrounds us.
An island race, we cannot but help be stirred by the images of the rising tide and the crested waves, we respect it, revere it enough to create music that we hope deep down will appease Neptune, but we also fear it enough to hope that our enemies will also be damned if they try to attack using the same drops of clear watery blood from Neptune’s veins.
For Glasgow based Trip, the memory of water, that bountiful and cruel entity that laps at our shore and entices us to water’s deep is the culmination of a tale that has been four years in the making, a kinship, a relationship of music that has seen the members bond from their days at the Royal Conservatoire in Scotland and through to moment of release in their debut recording, the stunning A Drop For Neptune.
In Michael Biggins, Tiernan Courell, Isla Callister, Alasdair Mackenzie, Rory Matheson, and Craig Baxter, the album is perhaps metaphorical in its delivery but supremely real in its finery, and it is absolutely a piece of art that captures the essence of the sea, of our place by its side, and how we as an island race who owes its existence to more than just a drop of Neptune’s blood. To frame this image, to show how the soul is soothed by the sound of music that is detailed in tracks such September Sea, Turning Tides, The Ninth Wave, The Arabic, and Towards The Storm, Trip go all out in ways that is comforting, alluring, filled with trepidation for what is to come, and like the sailor’s entranced by Neptune’s sirens, we eagerly aim for a distant shoreline and have our lives depend on our response.
A simmering beauty, a cocktail filled with songs in respect and proud nature of the seas and oceans, A Drop For Neptune is an album of magnificent endeavour and persuasion.
Trip release A Drop For Neptune on January 28th via Trip Music Records.
Ian D. Hall